The Far End of the Line
by Quinndolynn
Summary: Even when only one of them is hurt, they all try to take care of each other.
1. The Far End

Title: The Far End of the Line

Summary: Even when it's only one of them hurt, they all try to take care of each other.

Warnings: Whumpage. Essentially a teamfic, but you can read with whatever ship goggles you prefer. Nods to past McAbby and other incidents of early canon which I may have gotten wrong.

Disclaimer: I don't own them. I make no profit.

(This is for Mooncombo, for giving the kick in the pants that I needed.)

Part One of Two:

The phone rings slowly, enough space for her to take a breath between each shrill rattle. She lets it continue, knows there's no voicemail connected to her lab line, knows that each ring means the person on the other end hasn't hung up yet, hasn't given up.

Gibbs enters the lab, picks up the phone mid-ring, sighs an answer, and lets it fall back on the cradle. He comes to stand next to her, and she studies his hands. They're empty, and his hands are never empty when he visits her.

"Nothing today Abs," he says, when he sees her looking. His fingers flex once, twice, like he wishes he was holding something too. "C'mon, let's get your coat."

It's June outside, but she lets him help her into a coat left over from March, and in the elevator she winds a scarf around her neck that Tony brought home from Paris.

When they step out into morning sun and heavy humidity, she shivers.

Gibbs turns the air-conditioning to full blast as he drives, and she'll pretend that it's the cold that has made his hands so pale on the steering wheel, his knuckles so very bone-white. She watches him try to speak three times, tendon and cartilage bunching in his throat, but each time his mouth tightens down before speech escapes. The drive is short, and she can't tell if it's because he sped or because she wanted it to last forever.

They enter the sliding doors side by side and Gibbs paces the maze of linoleum with calm knowledge of direction. Tony's got his back to the door as they come in. His cell phone is pinned between his shoulder and his head, one finger plugs his ear against the minimal background noise, and one hand absently holds a cup of coffee. He gestures without care for the hot liquid sloshing inside, his shoulders a tense line in a crumpled dress shirt. His feet won't stand still.

Ziva leans on a wall across from him, arms folded, dark eyes tracking his restless movements. When Gibbs and Abby enter, her gaze slides past Tony to them and something like relief shifts across her face.

Tony catches the look, spins around, huffs a sigh at the sight of them. "Finally," he says, flipping his phone shut and hugging Abby hard, with his hands still full. She feels the momentary press of hot cardboard at her back, and it warms her.

"Any news?" Gibbs asks, in his efficient way, and Ziva shakes her head.

"Too soon," Tony adds as he releases Abby, and furtively checks the clock on the wall like he hopes he's mistaken.

"Did they say how long?" Gibbs prompts patiently.

"Only that it would be a while," Ziva says, frustration brimming on her face.

"They just swooped in, and—" Tony gestures vaguely. His arms, like Ziva's, are bare to the elbow, jackets discarded, sleeves rolled back, the skin from fingertips to the crook of the arm still faintly pink from vigorous scrubbing. When Ziva embraces Abby in turn, Abby smells the same disinfectant she uses on her lab tables.

"Find me someone to talk to," Gibbs orders, and Tony turns on his heel and marches off with purpose. Ziva stays next to Abby, hugging her around the waist with one arm like it's supposed to keep her standing. They watch as across the lobby Tony leans on the intake desk, trying for his usual charm and undermining his own efforts with the tense lines of his body, and the urgent edge in his voice. Finally someone flags down a blur in a white coat, long enough for Gibbs to join them.

It's a brief interview. Gibbs returns with the frown born of uncooperative witnesses.

Ziva squeezes Abby a little closer, and for a moment Abby lets herself sag against the other woman, reassured by the strength in Ziva's arm, the way she isn't afraid to look Gibbs and his frustration head on. He returns her gaze, boat-builder's eyes noting how they list to one side.

"Don't stand on my account," he says shortly, and settles in one of the yellow plastic chairs against the wall like he's planning on occupying it for a while.

"You don't need to get back?" Ziva asks, maneuvering Abby into the chair next to him.

"You planning on leaving any time soon?" Gibbs asks pointedly.

"I don't—" Ziva starts.

"No," Tony finishes, reappearing only to fling himself down into the chair next to Abby, and looking stubbornly over at his boss.

"Okay then," Gibbs says, and stretches his legs out as best he can with a coffee table in the way. Ziva looks at them warily, then takes the seat next to Tony.

"But if there's anything we can do from here boss…" Tony offers.

"Sure is," Gibbs says. He stands and disappears down the hall, returning a few minutes later with a stack of files Abby vaguely recognizes from his back seat.

Tony frowns. "I meant—"

"I know," Gibbs interrupts him.

"I'd really rather—"

"Four outstanding reports, DiNozzo," Gibbs says, overriding the rest of his protests by dropping the papers on the table in front of them with an emphatic smack. "No time like the present." He halves the pile and pushes a smaller stack further down in Ziva's direction. "David, you have three and yet another mandatory review on excessive force." Gibbs produces a handful of pens from his pocket, scatters them on the table and sits back down. Ziva picks up her stack and stretches her feet out on the table, busily uncapping a pen. Tony favors Gibbs with a heavily injured look, but angrily gathers up his just the same. He sighs and shifts like he's got detention on a spring afternoon, but he also stops looking at the clock every minute.

Gibbs finds Abby's hand, sweaty and cold, and squeezes it. "You should try to get some rest," he whispers in her ear. She appreciates that he only says try, acknowledging the overwhelming impossibility of that task. The clock on the wall is so slow she has time to take two deep breaths between every second, but she rests her head on Gibbs' shoulder just the same and tries.

It's meditation of sort, concentrating on making her body still like stone, only allowing her eyes to jerk and pause with the second hand, like that will force the minutes to pass faster. Gibbs' phone buzzes in his far pocket, and she hears the inaudible creak of fibers as he removes it, feels the tremor of his jaw moving when he answers. She closes her eyes against the clock and takes comfort in the faint British cadence on the far end of the line. Tony and Ziva's pens scratch across pages in counterbalance to each other, one moving unwillingly the other flowing in smooth script. Abby can tell Ziva's doing the excessive force review with her usual rote answers, and that Tony's struggling with a way to describe last Tuesday's debacle in a way that doesn't make him sound completely inept.

Gibbs bids Ducky goodbye, promising a full update when he has one.

Abby squeezes her eyes more tightly shut, until stars burst on the insides of her lids, and tries to disappear into the rhythms of her surroundings. The lobby's soundtrack is no different than any crime scene she's worked, elements isolating themselves in turn to paint a larger picture. The nurses at the desk direct people coming and going. There's the squeak and squeal of metal wheels. Somewhere a door swings opens and shut, releasing a snatch of Spanish in heated tones, which makes Ziva laugh shortly to herself, and Tony as well, after a delayed second of comprehension. The audio-pointillism begins to blur and fade after a while. She hears Tim's voice, raspy and tired and amused, like they're lying pressed together in her coffin, and she catches a fragment of Kate's laugh over the intercom, and that's when she knows she's dreaming.

She wakes up on Tony's shoulder. The clock's hands are at a different angle, but it somehow doesn't translate to a time. There are no shadows cast here. The sun could have risen and set a dozen times and she wouldn't know better.

She straightens up, pressing the heel of her hand into her spider web, working fingers into the knot of muscle beneath the ink. Gibbs is nowhere in sight, and Ziva's taken his seat. There's a neat pile of folders on the table in front of them, a handful of pens lined up precisely on top. Hospital corners, Abby thinks but doesn't say it.

"When?" she asks instead, and finds her throat dry and the question hoarse. "Soon?"

"Dunno," Tony answers, and checks his phone and the clock on the wall in a succession of movements now smoothed with repetition. "They said it would be a long time."

"No news is good," Ziva says reassuringly on her other side. "It just means that everything's going as expected."

"Nothing's going as expected," Abby says stubbornly, and tilts to lean against Ziva, who effortlessly shifts to accommodate the burden. Ziva is methodically reading a fashion magazine, a thick one with lots of ads and fold out photo spreads, which probably cost a small fortune in the overpriced gift shop. She turns each page with precision and studies each image with dutiful concentration, reading the names of new nail polish colors in margin ads, committing to memory the five essential tips for hair color preservation.

Abby's nerves hum with enough astonishment over falling asleep in the first place that she knows she can't hope to pull the same trick twice. She reads slantwise from Ziva's shoulder instead, concentrating on putting symmetrical kinks in her neck. Tony sits next to them, jiggling his foot and losing game after game of brick-breaker on his phone.

They're on page eighty-four and game thirty-five respectively when the bubble of silence that has grown around them is broken.

"Are you here for Timothy McGee?" a nurse asks. She's standing in front of them, but she's also flipping through a chart in her hand, and checking her pager and it takes them a moment to realize the question is addressed to them. "That's you guys right, for Mr. McGee?"

"Agent McGee," Tony corrects quickly, standing up so fast he almost overbalances. "I mean, uh, yeah. That's us."

"Everything's progressing as it should," she says blandly, still not looking at them. "It'll probably be at least another three hours." She retreats before they have time to question her further. Tony takes a step as if to follow, forgetting the coffee table in the way. His shins make a hollow sound when they collide with it. A few pens slide off the paper stack.

"Who put that there?" he grumbles looking down in annoyance, and falls back into his seat so hard that the plastic chair rattles. "What does _progressing_ even mean?"

"You should let Gibbs know," Ziva says in lieu of an answer, and turns another page. "He wanted an update when we had one. And I think Abby could use something to eat." Abby shakes her head, cheek sliding on Ziva's shoulder, but Ziva ignores the small protest. "And go outside to use the phone this time," Ziva instructs her partner. "The nurses keep you giving you dirty looks."

"Can I freshen your drink while I'm up?" Tony asks sarcastically, stretching his back, and tossing his phone from hand to hand.

"Something to drink would be nice," Ziva replies absently, seemingly captivated by a feature on equestrian detailing.

"I'll see what I can do," Tony promises with a roll of his eyes. His footsteps aren't quiet like Gibbs' are. His shoes squeak angrily on the linoleum when he walks away.

Ziva's absorbed in a photo of a model perched carefully on a hay bale, spotless from her heeled boots to her navy blazer, her hair the color of palest straw and lit golden by the sun through the barn door. Ziva leans her head for a moment on top of Abby's, dark strands of their hair mingling, mahogany and inky black.

"Sometimes women are better at sitting still, no?" she asks in a murmur.

"Sometimes," Abby says, and folds her hands firmly in her lap.

Tony's gone for forty-five minutes and by the time he comes back they've made it all the way to the classified ads for model pageants and the fine print about where the clothes actually come from. His arms are laden with junk food and he drops to his knees just as he loses his grip on everything, scattering chip bags and soda cans across the small table. Abby drags the pile of completed paperwork out of the way just in time, and snags a bottle of water that tries to make a break for it.

"So I checked out the cafeteria," Tony reports, surveying his bounty and spreading it out a little for their perusal, "but it was just too gross. Looked like they were trying to pass off rejected donor organs as beef stroganoff. Decided we'd have to go the vending route, so I tracked down the widest variety this fine institution can offer." He stands a soda can upright, and looks at them sideways. "Was there any, um, news?"

"We've heard nothing," Ziva tells him.

Tony nods briefly, then jerks his head at the mass of hydrogenated oil and empty starches. "Dig in."

Ziva fiddles with a bag of chips. "It _is_ past time to eat."

"Is it?" Abby echoes faintly.

Tony sags back on his heels. "No one's hungry huh?"

"Are you?" Ziva asks him.

He shakes his head. "God no." He climbs wearily to his feet, then reaches down as an afterthought to snag a packet of cookies and a bottle of water. He puts them gently in Abby's lap, and her fingers curl around the objects automatically to stop them from falling. "Eat something Abs," Tony urges. "Otherwise you're just going to be starving later and the only thing around will be McGee's dinner tray. And you _know_ he feels he can't eat pudding unless he's sick or injured." Tony takes the water and twists off the top for her, plastic crunching and snapping loudly in his large hands. "Don't cheat McGee out of his pudding by making hungry eyes at it, that's all I'm saying."

Abby drinks half the water, eats three vile cookies that taste like sand and cherry cough syrup, and Tony doesn't protest when she throws the rest away. The remainder of the food sits untouched through another long hour. Ziva finishes her magazine, closing it reluctantly and skimming her fingers over the perfume ad on the back cover with something resembling reverence, then goes to track down more reading material. She returns bearing an equally weighty tome with an equally underweight actress on the cover, and three coffees. Tony accepts his with a hollow smile, and Abby with the shocked realization of just how cold she feels. Drinking without thought she scalds her mouth on a boiling first sip, but it makes her sit straighter in her hard plastic chair.

After another hour Abby tears herself away long enough to use the bathroom. Ziva points her in the right direction, and Abby slips carefully through the white halls. She feels wraithlike and fragile, and no one really meets her eyes. The lights in the bathroom are so bright she has to squint. It's all white tile and cleanser fumes and momentarily disoriented she finds herself in the path of someone exiting a stall. The woman has swollen eyes and handfuls of mascara streaked toilet paper, and in spite of herself Abby flinches, all of a sudden totally and unreasonably terrified, craving a mask or a hazmat suit, even though she knows logically that the things this woman carries are not contagious. Tragedy cannot be transmitted through touch, she tells herself, even as she pulls her hands back into her coat sleeves.

Shame rushes through her instantly, but even worse is the complete and utter understanding Abby sees in the stranger's tear-filled eyes. The woman carefully skirts around her, and Abby ducks into the nearest stall, latching the door and leaning against it. Her hands shake and shake, and when she washes up afterwards she splatters water all over the sink and her coat.

Back out in the hallway she can feel people giving her a wide berth in her black, and normally that's a cause for amusement but today she's only grateful. She hides her trembling hands in her pockets and lingers at the lobby entrance, concealing herself behind a pillar. Tony and Ziva are talking in low tones, and Abby watches his head make the familiar cant and angle as he checks the time, Ziva's eyes following his movements as usual. His face is lined and old and hers is carved from stone, and Abby's hands shake and shake and stutter to a stop.

Abby comes around the corner, and Tony looks up and smiles at her, all shiny teeth and crinkly eyes, face youthful and hopeful and only a little tired around the mouth. "Take a load off Abs," he says, patting the seat she's left empty. "My shoulder's getting jealous of Ziva's."

She complies.


	2. The Proof Is In

Part Two: The Proof Is In

Somewhere shadows stretch and deepen. Somewhere clocks move at normal speeds, not half-paces and hop-skip-jumps.

After a while Tony gets up to do laps around the room, pacing off lengths of floor tile. Ziva mechanically eats a snack cake and is revolted. Fatigue tugs at Abby again, and even though she fights to stay awake, she's plagued by waking dreams in which Tony dances a solo tango at the margins of the room, Ziva is a frozen model in a photograph, and Tim sleeps in a coffin made of glass.

Gibbs reappears at some point, unobtrusively, like the afterimage she always glimpses out of the corner of her eye after a photoflash. She curls towards him a little, and finds he's real by the warm and heavy arm he places around her shoulders.

"You eat?" he asks, and she nods against his chest. "Hang in there Abs." He pulls the arm around her tighter.

"Ducky?" she asks, and no amount of bottled water or boiling coffee could ease the scratch from her voice.

"Had to leave someone to hold down the fort," Gibbs says easily, and after a moment she realizes that Gibbs left for a purpose, and wherever he disappeared to has led to a new body laid out on Ducky's table.

"Do you need me to—"

"It's fine. We'll be out of here soon enough."

Were it any other person she would call what she hears in his voice faith. But it's Gibbs, so she names it surety. It's comforting just the same.

Soon enough is a long time coming though. Tony stays still long enough to fall asleep leaning on Ziva. His mouth hangs slack and open, but his eyelids flicker, and his forehead creases in his sleep. Ziva still studies the magazine in her lap with religious dedication, turning the pages left-handed so as not to disturb her sleeping partner, cluttering her mind and eyes with summer prints and patterns.

It's not even close to their fault, Abby knows, and wonders if they believe it yet. She always thinks of blaming yourself like black X's on the backs of your hands, a damning indication not meant to come off easy. Scrubbing hard's not going to do it. They need Tim to wake up and tell them himself that this wasn't their doing.

He will wake up, Abby knows, and wishes she could believe it already.

Four hours after a nurse told them it would be three Gibbs' chest expands with a lungful of air he doesn't let out right away, and that's how Abby knows to look up. The nurse is back, and this time she actually looks at them.

"You're the folks here for Mr. McGee?"

"Agent McGee," Gibbs corrects, and helps Abby sit all the way up so he can get to his feet. Gibbs is the type of tall you don't notice until he wants you to, and today he is tall indeed. "What's his status?"

Ziva puts her hand very gently on Tony's knee, but he wakes up with a start nonetheless. He blinks at her confusion, and Abby watches the facts of where he is, and why, coming back to him, as he looks at the nurse and his face smoothes out.

"He just came out of surgery," the nurse tells them, voice doled out in soothing phrases. "They were able to remove all of the fragments, and stop the bleeding. They're going to wait to see how his pressure holds before doing any further repairs, but for now he's stable."

Even with Gibbs a good foot away from her now, Abby can feel his exhale.

"Can we see him?" her voice trips out her throat, cracking a little on a burnt tongue and waves of relief.

"They should have finished transferring him to his room. You're welcome to wait until he wakes up, but that could be a while."

"We'll wait," Tony says firmly, already folding his coat over his arm as Ziva grabs empty snack wrappers. They gather their things with the same efficiency that gets them to the elevator when Gibbs says 'dead marine.' Gibbs helps Abby to her feet as if he can tell by looking at her that her knees are weak. Boat-builders have knowledge of all joints after all, of wood and cartilage alike.

The lights are dim in Tim's room, and he blends in among the sheets, small and pale in his bed. For the first time in a long while Abby's struck by how thin he's become. He finally outran his baby fat, and he was so proud of it, but now he looks young all over again, and fragile, and she wishes he had the same moon face she remembers from the days when he tangled with wires and signals, rather than bad guys.

One of Tim's hands is ensnared in a mess of IV lines and tape, so she sits on his other side, dragging a chair close to the bed, and picks up his other hand. Their fingers are equally cool and clammy, and she wishes hers were warmer, but no one's going for coffee at this point.

Tony and Ziva take the chairs under the window. Her magazine is once more down to the dregs of fine print, so she doesn't bother to open it, and his phone shortly emits the warning beeps of a dying battery. They cross their arms over their chests and sometimes tilt against one another. Gibbs leans against the wall by the door, periodically stepping into the hall to place calls that he doesn't want overheard.

It saps all of Abby's strength to perform the simple task of hand-holding, and her head droops lower and lower until she lays it down on the bed next to Tim, wishing the scratchy chemical smells of his sheets didn't overwhelm the comforting scent of plastic, perspiration, and bar soap that she's come to expect when she's this close to him.

She can take three breaths between each green beep of his heart line. It's a new kind of clock she can't look away from, a sound that won't resolve into anything other than a repetitive tether, proof of life on the other end. She breathes, and listens, and holds his hand with all that's left in her.

It's pressure on her hand that wakes her. She squeezes back automatically and then opens her eyes, raises her head, to find Tim awake and smiling weakly, just enough that his face gets a little rounder.

She tastes all the scalded places inside her mouth, swallows tears, and smiles back.

"Sorry to keep you guys waiting," he whispers, cracked and hoarse, and Gibbs leans over to press the call button. Abby just looks brilliantly back at him, and it's the brightest smile McGee's ever seen on her face, even though her lips are uncharacteristically pale.

"You call this waiting?" Tony says, stepping close, and patting McGee's ankle awkwardly. "This was a forced paperwork retreat." Tony's voice is cranked down in volume, so as not to call attention to how weak his probie sounds.

"Ouch," McGee says, as if he's the one who should to be sympathetic.

"No kidding," Tony agrees. "How you holding up?"

"Been better," McGee admits, and he's about to say something else, but the nurse arrives and shoos them out the hall so she can check him over. Ziva calls Ducky to let him know the news, her own voice rough and low. Abby relieves Tony of a packet of chips and eats them in handfuls, salt stinging her raw tongue.

The nurse reappears, smiling. "Agent McGee can have visitors until ten," she informs them, and holds open the door.

Gibbs clears his throat significantly. He's hung up on yet another mysterious phone call, and it wasn't Ducky on the other end. "We won't be staying long," he tells his agents. Tony and Ziva trade glances. Abby can see the self-blame slipping off of them, like black-X's finally washing away in the shower. Tony unrolls his shirtsleeves, tugging the crumpled fabric down to his wrists, and doing his cuff buttons with smooth practiced motions.

Abby shivers, but this time it's because she's suddenly feeling warm all over.

"Right," is all Tony says. Ziva nods briskly, and they all follow Gibbs back inside.

Tim's sitting up now, still thin, still pale, but his eyes are bright and clear.

"What's the latest?" he asks, looking from one to another.

"Latest isn't any of your concern," Gibbs says firmly, holding onto the back of a chair like he doesn't want his hands to be empty. "You only have to worry yourself with resting up and doing everything the nurses tell you to."

"But what about, I mean, haven't you—"

"We've been here," Tony says shrugging.

"The whole time?" Tim asks, eyes widening. "It's been, what—"

"Where else would we be?" Ziva adds in her casually incredulous voice, but she smiles warmly at him.

"Right," Tim says, and looks at the wires in his hand. "Right."

"Ziva got to read fashion magazines," Tony volunteers, before the moment can get too sentimental. "She's a 'real girl' now."

Ziva gently thwacks the back of his head with a rolled up magazine. "They're all yours now."

"What would I want with them?"

"You seemed quite interested in the photo spread about finding your perfect fit bra."

Tony leers at her triumphantly. "Now I'm _qualified_ to tell the ladies when they don't have proper _support_."

Ziva makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, and shoves him lightly in the chest so he'll clear space at the bedside. She bends gracefully, kisses McGee's cheek, and looks at him sternly. "If you leave me on my own with that man for too long I cannot vouch for his survival. Do you understand me?"

Tim smiles up at her, face reddening just a little. "I'll see what I can do."

"Rest up," Tony commands, reaching to clasp his shoulder, and checking the gesture just in time. He pats McGee's elbow instead "We'll stop by soon as we can."

"Yeah," McGee says, looking tired again. "Yeah." He looks past his teammates to Gibbs. "Boss, I know I shouldn't have, uh—"

"I know you're not trying to apologize," Gibbs says with quiet surety.

"Um. No," McGee agrees, and falters to a stop.

"Good." Gibbs looks him over a moment, one sweeping, calculating glance that takes in everything from the chart at the foot of the bed to the stark white edge of a bandage visible where McGee's gown gapes at the neck. "You did good today. We got it from here."

"Yeah," Tony and Ziva say in near unison.

They say their final goodbyes and their footsteps are light on the floor as they turn to leave.

Gibbs puts his hand on Abby's arm when she hesitates to follow.

"It's alright Abby."

"I can go if you need me."

"Someone's got to hold down the fort," Gibbs reminds her. He fishes his car keys from his pocket and presses them into her hand. "Don't drive if you feel too tired."

"Aye aye," Abby says. Gibbs presses a rushed kiss to her cheek as he goes, swift and thoughtless like maybe he's got extra emotion rattling around his insides too, relief and love, exhaustion and unspent grief, all spinning in a mix.

From out in the hall comes the dull thud of five pounds of glossy ads hitting the bottom of a trash bin, the beginning of a scuffle over car keys, voices rising in tones too bright for a disagreement, cut short by unheard smacks delivered with too much fondness for the occasion.

Abby touches the back of her hand, and smiles, and turns around.

Tim is studying her. "You should rest," he says. His eyes are concerned even though he hasn't the slightest right to be worried about any of them.

"I slept," Abby says, and it isn't entirely a lie. At last she sheds her coat, unwinds her scarf, bends to unlace her tall boots. Her pulse beats steady in her wrist, in perfect time with his heart monitor, green spikes of electric warmth, each one a shock back to life. "I think I'm too tired to drive home tonight, though."

"It's family only after hours," Tim points out, but his smile says he knows how small an obstacle that is.

"Yeah," Abby agrees. A dinner tray sits on a side table, and she draws it up between them. "But I can't let you eat alone now can I? Check it out, beef stroganoff, steamed spinach. _Chocolate pudding_. They're giving you the good stuff. I'm a little jealous actually. Tony fed us vending dreck—"

"Abby," Tim says, breaking through her prattle, voice soft and raspy, like she dreamed it earlier, and low, like they're lying close together. But it's the tiredness that does it, and it's a bed with wheels his lying in, not a coffin.

_Not a coffin_.

She'll light an extra candle at church tomorrow. An extra ten candles. A hundred. The sisters will understand.

"I'm sorry I made you worry," McGee whispers.

He's always taking liberties that way, no right to worry about her, _none_, and yet there he is anyway, brow furrowed in underserved concern. She clears her throat. "You know apologizing means your pudding is forfeit, right?"

"I know." He reaches for her hand, like Gibbs did twenty times today knowing it would be there, and it is. He squeezes, and she tightens her hold in return, but gently, softened like Tony's voice, so they won't acknowledge how weak his grip is.

"I really am sorry," he says again.

"Two strikes!" she warns, shaking her head. "Three and you're out. Better eat it first in case I change my mind."

He takes the spoon she holds out, accepting it as he accepts her terms. She examines him in contented silence, as he enjoys his first taste of the same empty calories Tony's been trying to feed them all day. "You know what this always reminds me of?" he asks, happily nostalgic for a moment.

Abby's pretty sure she does. "No."

"You remember when we tried to make that gelatin dessert thing?" he asks, ignoring her protest, mischief in the curve of his mouth.

"We're not talking about that," Abby says, quickly but firmly, and scowls at him when he grins wider.

"There was chocolate every—"

"Tim!" Abby says warningly.

"—made it to the _ceiling_—"

"_Tim_!" she hisses.

He examines her over the edge of the pudding cup. "I should stop talking for my own good shouldn't I?"

"The nurse _did_ say you needed your rest. I'd hate to have to call her back and tell her you need something to help knock you out." Her eyebrows arch in amused warning and he concentrates on that, rather than the lingering wetness that sticks her eyelashes together underneath.

"Noted." He grins around an innocent spoonful, stifles a happy groan as it slides sweet, cool, and plasticky down his throat. They sit in amicable silence until he yawns and smiles at her sleepily. "Thanks for sticking around Abs."

She regards him for a moment. "You too."

He blinks at her, eyelids drooping. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Damn straight," Abby says.

He's asleep within a minute, before he can eat anything besides pudding off his dinner tray. She can't imagine he's missing out on much. The spoon slides easily from his slack grasp and she sets it aside. The room is very quiet, the beep of monitors soft and muted, like rain on a window outside.

"I remember you were wearing your jeans that are ripped on one knee," Abby tells him softly, his face soft and open in sleep. "And a t-shirt that Tony left behind after paintball one time, because someone had spilled soda on you at the movie. We'd seen some stupid crime thriller, and you'd mocked the computer specs and I'd mocked the forensics, and it was beastly hot everywhere that wasn't a movie theater. _I_ was all for making plain old popsicles, but _you_ were feeling ambitious and fancy. And then, yes, _I_ was the one who failed to snap the blender lid closed." She scowls again. "I _usually_ am very good at cooking you know."

Her eyes snag and catch on the bandage peeking out of the gown, the tape curling up at his neck and shoulders. But she drags her gaze back up and away, because McGee is not a clock, and she isn't trapped in the waiting room anymore. "You got chocolate up to both elbows," she informs him. "And in your ear. We found frozen strawberries in your pants pockets."

That afternoon is a million miles away, and they're different people now, but telling the story warms her more than any coffee she's had today.

"So we wound up sitting on the kitchen floor, eating all the fruit separately and scooping chocolate out of the blender with our fingers, and that was when you told me that you were being considered for a transfer to the yard. With chocolate smeared all over you and everything." She has to smile at the image. "I thought it was awesome, that you would make a wonderful investigator. You weren't so sure, but I told you to go for it. I said you you'd be great."

She touches his hand, lightly so she won't wake him, and smiles through her tears and the memories of chocolate on his fingers, her lips sweet and cold.

"Do not prove me wrong, okay?" Abby orders. "Because today was _really_ _not_ _awesome,_ Tim. There are easier ways of getting pudding." She traces an X on the back of his hand and wipes the invisible mark away with her thumb. Abby's been scrubbing marker off her skin since she was old enough to appreciate a well snarled bass line, but something makes her think self-blame's got a little more staying power. "You can't be great if you're going to get hurt," she says in final warning, and Tim sighs in his sleep.

Abby withdraws her hand and sits back, settling in for the long haul. Her coat is spread over her lap, a foraged candy bar in the pocket, Gibbs car keys discarded next to the meal tray. She listens for a while to the soft rain stick noise of the monitors and nurses' footsteps, and then she goes out into the hall and retrieves Ziva's magazines from the bottom of the recycling, turns out her coat pockets to find some of Gibbs' pens. She thinks the models in those photo spreads could use some tats.

She wakes in the morning when Gibbs picks up her coat from the floor and tucks it around her. She stirs, catches his jacket sleeve. "When? Soon?"

He kisses her forehead. "It's done Abby."

"Okay." She subsides. There's a question she wants to ask about responsibility, about Kate and her far away laugh and how she joined NCIS at the urging of the not-so-very tall man who is now picking up an ink-smeared magazine from the floor.

But now that Abby's awake she sees that Tim is as well, sitting up and cautiously eating dry toast, while Tony regales him with the story of yesterday's conclusion, peppered here and there with Ziva's caustic additions. Ducky is holding up the chart and making observations of no great importance to no one in particular. The sun is bright through the window. The question fades and dies somewhere inside her, as Gibbs pats the back of her hand, and examines her art.

When Abby checks her phone later, the call log will show her that sometime in the middle of the night she called her lab line, just to hear it ring and ring and ring.

((This is one of those stories where the parts I wrote and subsequently discarded are almost as long as the story itself. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the finished product!))


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